the first hello of many

Greetings to all who decided to click on this post, i hope the day has greeted you all with the same upbeat positive attitude, happiness and bountiful energy that it has greeted me today.
I am new to the primal forum and just wanted to explore what it has to offer and join this awesome community that i have stumbled upon.

A quick look into my background:

I am 26 and have been out of shape most my life. I've always been relatively active , played sports in school, always enjoyed a hike/walk/bike ride and I've been snowboarding for about 11 years now. But I also found myself victim of over eating, closet eating and a mostly sedentary life style. I found myself exploring more movies, video games and TV then what mother nature and life had to offer, despite the voice in my head that kept telling myself I longed to be more active. I have always been a larger specimen , in high school topping the scale at just under 285, but i had tried to live healthier and be more active a few times with no consistency. I found myself 5 years ago determined to shed the fat and look better naked and be able to play and run around with out feeling like i would keel over, yet fell short of my goals as many people wind up experiencing. Not only once but 3 times I fell victim to over training and pushing my body too hard and eating too little of the right foods and far too much of the wrong foods(according to a primal lifestyle of course). Despite the damage I was doing to my body by yo-yoing and such, I had dropped down to 220 Lbs at my lowest and was feeling pretty good. Without failure it all caught up to me and I found , much to my dismay, that i feel right back into my lazy unhealthy sedentary lifestyle full of bingeing on super unhealthy foods. I blamed it on many things(too tired from work, too much work, not enough time) for about 2 years. I spent many hours reading through websites and blogs trying to get motivated to live healthier but i always found myself trapped in the laziness that I had created(along with "conventional wisdom" ......but mostly myself). I had let my health go and found myself back up to around 260 Lbs and felt horrible on a day to day biases.

A Welcome Change:

After deciding that I was doomed to a life being unfit and out of shape, sluggish, lazy , tired.......(the list goes on), I came across the idea of primal living . Eventually after a few minutes of looking into it I found Marks Daily Apple , it made sense. Everything that had been going through my head on my journey to find motivation to be healthy and all the general ideas In my head fit almost perfectly to the primal lifestyle. Immediately I had more motivation and excitement to become healthy then I had in all the years of forcing myself to exercise and eat healthy(that never stuck and I ended up forgetting/giving up......or more so chose to ignore). I spent hours reading and exploring the ideas and stories on MDA and after a week spent diving into the primal idea of living , I decided to go for it

Where I stand now:

It has been about 2 and a half weeks since I decided to make the switch to a primal lifestyle, and I feel amazing. I have more energy on a regular consistent biases then I can ever remember having, I have lost (for the most part) all the mood swings that I had given into and excepted that it was just who I had become. Everything just seems better and the best part is that it seems like this will be easy to maintain. The idea is relatively simple and to be honest , now that I've been introduced to this lifestyle, it seems impossible to think I would even be able to go back to where I once was after having my eyes opened to being primal. I have ditched all the bad foods(cheated two times.....croutons on a salad and couldn't resist fresh organic pesto on a few slices of fresh baguette) and have been following the PB about 85/15 lately. Read the PBF and have started to read PB as well as spending hours reading various posts on MDA.

That was just a little intro to my adventure and I will be adding several posts on my journey through life to keep and enjoy a primal lifestyle like everyone else here, THANK YOU MARK!

Hi Wildbear. Yes, I got that energised feeling this morning just walking out of the supermarket. I suddenly got the feeling that I could just take off running for the fun of it. No, I didn't, because I would have been running into people, but I suddenly knew the energy was there if I wanted it.

I've found that understanding why certain foods are bad for me makes it a lot easier to make choices about what I will eat. I've done plenty of low carb, but I assumed that was purely about weight and didn't really understand the nutrition and deficiency issues that are tied up with it. Now I get it and things like cheese that I would have thought would tempt me (dairy gives me major acne) just don't any more. I'm happy to find alternative favourites - like coconut!

That's great to hear what a change you have made in the few weeks you have switched to primal! I'm still in week one and I'm feeling progressively better despite sometimes self sabatoging myself. But it's wonderful to hear stories of changed lives, keep at it and best of luck!

Thank you all, glad to be part of the community ! I've been super busy the last few days so i haven't been on MDA. Sleep has been hard to come by for me the last few days and boy can I feel it as far as energy . On that note I have noticed that i still have more energy than I would have had on these types of days before I went primal . Lack of sunny days also is kinda a drag , finally the sun is back out today and I can't wait to get out of work and spend some time soaking some vitamin D. Although I have been eating primal pretty strictly since my last post , I've been in a few social situation that tempted me with beer. Beer is the biggest hurdle for me In this life style . I was a big drinker before and I definitely have cut back how much I drink and surprisingly it wasn't too hard, I just substituted the time I would be drinking with being outside and active . I'm sure everyone faces the dilemma of peer pressure from time to time when it comes to drinking , I have found it pretty easy to just say no ...... Except for the last few days haha. It's not the end of the world and I can say I had a blast so I'm not going to beat myself up about it , it will just give me a little more motivation to not drink for a while. I found its more rewarding and makes it seem a little more special of a night when you don't drink everyday ( and a lot healthier too) and only drink once and a while .

I'm looking forward to digging deeper into the forum and starting to follow some posts .... But it's too nice out right now to stay in this computer so another time . Grok on and get out there and explore !

That's great to hear what a change you have made in the few weeks you have switched to primal! I'm still in week one and I'm feeling progressively better despite sometimes self sabatoging myself. But it's wonderful to hear stories of changed lives, keep at it and best of luck!

Thank you , it can be very hard to just change how you do/view things especially in the beginning . I have found since my last post that some days are for sure harder than others and I had a day or two that I slipped up . the way i view it( and im sure the majority of people view it the same) as long as I keep the idea in the back of my head of making this change and stick to it as much as I can ,that straying from the path a little every once and a while isn't an end all .... That's the reason mark prompts the 80/20 Rule I suppose haha . Keep up the great work !